The Nobel prize has been awarded in three scientific fields — chemistry, physics and physiology or medicine — almost every year since 1901, barring some disruptions mostly due to wars.
Nature crunched the data on the 346 prizes and their 646 winners (Nobel prizes can be shared by up to three people) to work out which characteristics can be reliably linked to medals.
Each circle here represents a Nobel laureate, a person who has received a Nobel prize. (...)
- You can greatly improve your chances of winning a Nobel by working in the laboratory of a scientist who already has one or will in the future, or by working with someone whose mentors won. Prizewinners often beget or emerge from the labs of other laureates2. They frequently share mentors or mentees — those who supervised them or their students, or their students’ students.(...)
- You might expect lots of separate clusters to emerge as distinct academic families. But it turns out that almost all Nobel laureates share some connection, however distant, as represented by this sprawling network.
An incredible 702 out of 736 researchers who have won science and economics prizes up to 2023 are part of the same academic family — connected by an academic link in common somewhere in their history.by Kerri Smith & Chris Ryan, Nature | Read more:
Image: Chu-Chieh Lee
[ed. See also: Yes, scientific progress depends on like a thousand people (partial paywall, Intrinsic Perspective).]
